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Updated: June 12, 2025
A slave-girl came out to me and said, "What dost thou want?" "I want thy master," answered I. Quoth she, "He is sitting alone, mourning." "Tell him," rejoined I, "that his friend so and so seeks to condole with him." She went in and told him; and he said, "Admit him." But who is dead unto thee?" "One who was dearest and best beloved of the folk to me," answered he. Quoth I, "Perhaps thy father?"
Said the Governor's son, "She is mine for a thousand pieces of gold and one more;" and the broker passed on to Ala al-Din who bid two thousand dinars for her; and as often as the Emir's son bid another dinar, Ala al-Din bid a thousand. The ugly youth was vexed at this and said, "O broker! who is it that outbiddeth me for the slave-girl?"
It would appear, however, that the "bride-sale," of which Tacitus speaks, was not strictly the sale of a chattel nor of a slave-girl, but the sale of the mund or protectorship over the girl. It is true the distinction may not always have been clear to those who took part in the transaction.
Accordingly, next morning, Alaeddin mounted and rode to the Divan, where he took his seat as Chief of the Sixty. Presently the Khalif bade his treasurer give the Vizier Jaafer ten thousand dinars and said to the latter, 'I charge thee to go down to the slave-market and buy Alaeddin a slave-girl with this sum. So Jaafer took Alaeddin and went down with him to the bazaar.
It was in darkness, but I could see the slave-girl in front of me, a slim silhouette, as she walked to a screened window, and, opening the screen in the manner of a folding door, also threw up the window. "Look!" she whispered. I crept forward and stood beside her. I found myself looking down into Museum Street from a first-floor window!
"Because I would rather sleep in a pit into which a tiger has fallen, I would rather sleep in the lair of a hippopotamus, I would rather sleep in a canoe guarded by alligators and crocodiles, I would rather spend a night in a cellar full of scorpions and scolopendras, or in the Tower of Surem, which is haunted by the accursed Jinns, than pass a single night in the same room with this slave-girl."
"It gratifies me much to hear you say so," replied Mrs Langley. They spoke in a jargon of languages, and made up their deficiencies by signs, of which we dare not attempt a characteristic translation. "He sent you a new slave-girl lately, I believe?" said the Sultana, beginning to feel her way.
The idea was so incongruous that a cold little smile parted her lips. It seemed as if each time her imagination reached out investingly, an invisible lash beat it back. Still, she knew instinctively that all of Sidney Carton's life had not been put upon the printed page. But to go courting a slave-girl, at the risk of physical hurt! A shudder of distaste wrinkled her shoulders.
"Not now," she answered, cold as superiority, and interposing her hand. The door stood wide open, and the slave-girl, Virgie, in it, holding the Entailed Hat. Milburn, with a shudder, took it, and covered himself, and departed. The kitchen had been a scene of anything but culinary peace and savor during the long visit of the owner of the hat.
Now when the jeweller heard these lines and understood their significance, he wept also and told him all that had passed betwixt himself and the slave-girl and her mistress since he left him.
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